He’s the Point Man in Builders’ Battles Against Slow Growth
It was two months before election day 1988, and Southland builders were clearly worried.
Surveys indicated that Measure A, a proposition on the June ballot that would make deep cuts in new home construction in Orange County, could win by as much as 80% of the vote.
If the measure should pass, many local builders would suffer millions of dollars in lost sales and see the value of their buildable land plummet.
Enter Lynn R. Wessell, a veteran political consultant who had come to the rescue of other builders and realtors facing seemingly unsurmountable odds dozens of times in the past.
Armed with sophisticated computer programs, targeted mailings and hundreds of workers--not to mention a multimillion-dollar budget--Wessell launched a finely tuned drive aimed at scuttling the initiative.
Almost immediately, the initiative’s approval rating began to drop. By election day, just eight weeks after Wessell had taken control of the faltering “No on A” campaign, the measure went down to a resounding 56%-44% defeat.
“I guess you could say it was one of my finer moments,” Wessell said recently in an interview in his cluttered, no-frills office on North Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles. “But it’s always satisfying when you win.”
The battle wasn’t cheap: It cost more than $2 million to defeat Measure A, with most of the money coming from builders. Some of the cash-strapped slow-growth advocates who supported the proposition complained that Wessell had “bought the election,” but the consultant says it was just the cost of doing business.
Willing to Discuss
“Money is a resource--nothing more, nothing less,” Wessell said. “In the case of Measure A, the slow-growth side had people. Our biggest resource was money. And if it takes money to get your message out--I don’t care what kind of campaign you’re working on--then you have to spend it.”
Wessell’s willingness to discuss money’s role in politics is just one factor that sets him apart from other campaign consultants, most of whom are tight-lipped when it comes to talking about cash.
Much of the money Wessell spends is on targeted mailers aimed straight at the voter’s pocketbook. In the Measure A campaign, one mailer inferred that passage of the initiative would erode the tax-cutting Proposition 13 of a decade earlier, while another indicated that families in the northern portion of Orange County would wind up paying $1,800 each for a measure designed to benefit only “some south county elitists.”
“I never lie in a campaign, because once you do, you lose the confidence of the voters and undermine your whole campaign,” Wessell said. But, he added after some prodding, “There’s no rule that says you have to represent everybody’s point of view.
Telling the Truth
“I’m here to get across my own and my client’s point of view, and the other side is responsible for getting across theirs. But I believe you always have to tell the truth.”
Telling the truth is a tenet that some of Wessell’s current and past opponents say that Wessell himself breaks often. Many commonly refer to him as “Weasel,” not Wessell.
“His mailers were all a bunch of bull . . . ,” said Belinda Blacketer, an attorney who worked on Measure A. “Lynn Wessell is very good at taking things totally out of context and then running with it.”
Added Russ Burkett, a leader in the losing Measure A campaign: “The guy is the consummate political liar. If there was a way to litigate First Amendment rights when it comes to politics, Wessell would be in court all the time.”
Thanks in part to his surprise victory in Orange County last year, Wessell has never been busier than he is today. Shortly after his big win last spring, nearly every California builder who was facing an upcoming slow-growth proposition or other land-use issue offered to hire him.
Other Issues of Interest
Wessell turned most of them down.
“Fighting growth ordinances is a very difficult and time-consuming job--it really stretches your resources,” said Wessell, who claims to have worked on campaigns for nearly 20 growth issues and won 80% of them. “Besides, there are a lot of other issues I’m interested in.”
The 50-year-old consultant never expected to become such a hot property. Born in Los Angeles, he attended Greenville College in Illinois and received a bachelor’s degree in political science and a minor in religion, “thinking seriously of going into the ministry.” He served as a communications specialist in the Air Force from 1960 to 1964, processing top-secret messages in Okinawa and later, in Riverside.
He taught at several Midwestern schools after his Air Force stint, finally returning to California in 1969 to get his doctorate in political science from Claremont Graduate School at the Claremont Colleges in the San Gabriel Valley.
Assembly Campaign
Wessell began working as a volunteer in the Republican Party in 1971, and took his first paid political job in 1972. He organized a grass-roots campaign for Paul Bannai, a Gardena city councilman who was running for a state Assembly seat in a heavily Democratic district.
It was the first of what would become a decades-long string of upset victories in which Wessell played a key role: Bannai won by a healthy margin.
“It really whet my taste for politics, especially because we were facing supposedly unbeatable opposition,” said Wessell, who lives with his wife and daughter in the San Fernando Valley and spends his spare time raising Arabian horses.
Wessell’s conservative bent is the main reason why he takes on so many causes championed by realtors and developers.
Property Owner’s Rights
Realty professionals--and particularly real estate trade groups--tend to take a conservative view of individual property rights. They oppose slow-growth ordinances, strict rent control laws and the like, saying such measures often trample the property owner’s rights guaranteed by the Constitution.
“I’m a very big believer in property rights,” Wessell said. “When you’re talking about no-growth, you’re raising some very serious constitutional questions.”
Wessell was named executive director of the Los Angeles County Boards of Realtors in 1975, a job he still holds in addition to heading his consulting firm. But he doesn’t confine his consulting work to real estate matters, taking on a variety of other conservative causes.
He handled the campaign last fall for Proposition 96, a controversial statewide initiative designed to allow courts to order testing of some criminal suspects for the AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus.
Handgun Issue
Sponsored by Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block, the measure--staunchly opposed by gay-rights groups, many health organizations and Democrats in general--breezed to a 62%-38% victory.
Wessell also played a key role in defeating a 1982 proposition that would have put a freeze on new handgun sales throughout the state. His work on that campaign may have done more than strengthen the rights of gun dealers and owners.
The huge number of conservatives who turned out to vote against the measure has also been credited for giving Republican George Deukmejian a razor-thin, 1% margin of victory over his Democratic opponent in that year’s gubernatorial elections, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley.
“I see a parallel between growth-control intiatives and gun-control initiatives,” Wessell said. “Both sound very attractive, but neither one works--you’ll still have traffic or you’ll still have criminals, even if the initiatives get approved.”
Wessell also lobbies on behalf of individual developers who are having trouble getting their projects approved by government agencies.
Pleasure Faire Site
Earlier this month, one of his builder clients finally got approval from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to build 150 homes on the former site of the Renaissance Pleasure Faire in Agoura--apparently dashing hopes that the land would become public parkland.
He is also helping Browning-Ferris Industries, the huge waste-disposal company, in its fight against efforts by some homeowners and city officials to limit dumping at the company’s Sunshine Canyon Landfill in Granada Hills.
The ongoing battle to limit the dumping has its lighter sides. In an effort to counter a pro-industry newsletter that Wessell publishes called “Sanitary News,” some Granada Hills residents are publishing a parody newsletter that pokes fun at both Wessell and Browning-Ferris.
“We call it ‘Unsanitary News,’ ” said Dotti Main, a homeowner who lives near the landfill. “Wessell’s newspaper has all these stories about people in other parts of the Valley that think the dump is so terrific, so our paper is filled with (fictional) stories about people who come from Indiana and Australia just to see the dump.
“We get some serious stuff in our newsletter, too, like news about what’s going on with the dump,” Main said. “But the truth is, we feel out-gunned by Mr. Wessell. He’s just got so much money and power behind him.”
Times staff writer Gabe Fuentes contributed to this story.
